A Guide to Hanging Out in Far Suburbia

Sometimes The Field just didn’t cut it!

There comes a time when running barefoot through the weeds isn’t enough. With no playground or pool, where does a poor little baby-boomer-to-be hang out?  Well, the corner store became the fallback.  There was a huge parking lot and plenty of room near the store to park your bike and bs with your posse. 

The parking lot also held the distinction of the World’s Most Tortured Pepsi Machine.  Soda machines in those days had bottles on the left side (vertically), ice cold and protected by steel rollers that would only loosen if you paid.  Like clockwork, someone shoved a metal slug or similar weapon into the coin slot to get a free soda.  The result was almost always a jammed machine.  Every few weeks, someone would claim to have the perfect, foolproof slug.  One by one, these geniuses were thwarted.  And the poor machine would stall and lock up every time.  Once, someone did get a working slug and we had free sodas all around–a treasured day recalled for months afterword. I rode by once and stopped to watch the miserable Pepsi man pull five slugs out of the machine. No doubt stopping way out here was the highlight of his exciting day. The machine stayed lit, 24/7. If someone was coming to the neighborhood at night, there was only the occasional street lamp. So, you’d say ‘Turn left at the Pepsi machine.’ Springsteen had the giant Exxon sign, we had a Pepsi machine–take that, Boss!

Since these were glass ‘returnable’ bottles, wood crates stood by to collect empties.  But who used them?  Not cool kids like us! Put bottles on the machine, on the ground, smash them, or (my favorite) pee in them and place it lovingly in the crate.  Invariably, the store owner emerged and yelled very creative obscenities at us eight-year-olds, as we struggled to withhold giggling.  And just as inevitably, the machine was jammed, bottles were broken, and people began to christen the machine with their pee. The big secret we held close to our breasts was that the owner’s son frequently masterminded slug creation.  He wasn’t cool with body fluids, but I suppose that was understandable.